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Gelatine Custard
To one-third package Coxe's gelatine, add a little less than one pint boiling water; stir until gelatine is dissolved, add the juice of one lemon, and one and a half cups sugar; strain through a jelly、 strainer into dish for the table, and set in a cool place. For custard, to one and a half pints milk add the yolks of four eggs (reserving the whites), and four table-spoons sugar; cook and flavor when cool. When required for the table, cut gelatine into small squares, and over them pour the custard. Add four table-spoons powdered sugar to the whites of four eggs well beaten, and when ready for the table place over the custard with a spoon. -Mrs. W. A. James.
A two-part dessert: a lemon jelly cut in cubes, drowned in stirred custard, and finished with a sweetened raw meringue. The custard and the jelly are sound period technique; the topping is the problem.
- Why the cautionThe final layer is four egg whites beaten with sugar and spooned over the dessert with no cooking of any kind, then held at the table. Uncooked egg white is a recognised vehicle for Salmonella, and the sugar and moisture of the custard beneath give it hours at room temperature to multiply. If you want this dessert, use a current recipe with a cooked or Swiss-style meringue.
- Coxe's gelatineCoxe's Sparkling Gelatine was sold in sheet and in granulated form, but package weights were not standardised and the original gives none, so "one-third package" cannot be converted with any confidence. Modern envelopes hold ¼ oz (about 7 g) and set two cups to a firm jelly; the quantity here is meant to give a jelly stiff enough to cut into cubes with a knife.
- "A little less than one pint boiling water"Just under two cups. Powdered gelatine today is normally bloomed in a few tablespoons of cold liquid first and then dissolved in the hot; sheet gelatine is soaked in cold water and squeezed. Dumping dry granules straight into boiling water, as the original does, tends to leave lumps.
- The jelly strainerA conical cloth bag or a doubled square of muslin, used to catch lemon pulp and any undissolved gelatine. A fine mesh sieve lined with a coffee filter or damp cheesecloth does the same job. Strain directly into the serving dish, as instructed, so the jelly sets where it will be cut.
- "Cook" the custardThe instruction is bare. This is a stirred custard: yolks and sugar combined with the milk and cooked over low heat or a water bath, stirring constantly, until it coats a spoon at about 170-175°F. Much above 180°F and the yolks will curdle.
- "Flavor when cool"The recipe names nothing; vanilla, nutmeg, or a spoonful of sherry or brandy are the usual period choices. Added off the heat so the flavour does not cook away.
- Setting time and yieldSetting time -- "A cool place" meant a cellar or larder; the jelly needs four hours or overnight in the refrigerator to cut cleanly. The recipe gives no yield.
Gelatine desserts of this kind belong to the moment when gelatine stopped being a kitchen labour and became a grocery purchase. Until the middle of the nineteenth century a cook wanting jelly boiled down calves' feet or isinglass and clarified the result with egg white; branded refined gelatines, Coxe's among them, reduced that to dissolving a measured sheet or spoonful in hot water. The Dixie Cook Book, compiled from contributed household recipes in the 1880s, names the brand as a matter of course, the way a modern recipe names cornstarch. The assembly itself — gelatine with beaten whites — is often said to be a domesticated descendant of the older floating island and snow eggs, in which the meringue was commonly poached in milk rather than merely spooned on raw, though floating island took various forms.